During my last visit to Bangalore in May 2009, along with my cousins, family & kids we made a trip to Bannarghatta national park about 22 Km from Bangalore. That day weather at Bangalore was too hot, humid & uncomfortable and very much unlike Bangalore famous for. Traffic congestion also played its role to our discomfort as it took nearly two hours to reach Bannarghatta from cantonment area.

Weekend crowd was uncontrollable for the authorities and we had to stand for more than an hour in queue for the mini van to pick us up for the safari ride. After buying the tickets, while in middle of the queue of about 300 people or so, we discussed about the option of even quitting the place and return home. We couldn’t think of that even as there were at least 150 people packed behind us in the narrow Andaman cellular jail like arrangements and stayed back cursing our luck and waited with utmost patience for our turn to come. The place was so unclean, unhygienic, the rusted iron grilled and fenced path way, and the broken overhead roof asbestos sheets along the queue path bore a World War II era construction well preserved and maintained.

My main object of the trip was to snap some wild life pictures of the animals that are in open and real jungle like environment. Did I achieve that? No. The mini van drivers were probably instructed by the management to hurry up the safari as hundreds were still in queue behind us, toiling the weather and the pathetic conditions, waiting to be picked up. As expected the wild roller coaster like drive was too jerky & bumpy and not all that conducive for photography. On each occasion we confronted some wild animals, driver stopped the vehicle only for a few minutes and I really didn’t get any good focus on those that I intended to capture. Pull & push from the co passengers to peep through the glass window to have a glimpse of the heat withered, sleepy & drowsy animals made my photography efforts worst.

There are other attractions too here, a butterfly park, crocodile farm; In addition, a portion of the park is used as a sanctuary for wild rescued animals. There is a zoo inside the park, which has deer’s, elephants, snake enclosures, aquarium, panther, zebra and the other usual animals. There is also a small museum and a forty five minutes film show on Animals!

We were too exhausted and tired to visit all other attractions (?) and straight headed for our car to return home.

The very next day we made a trip to Wonder La, the Amusement water theme park on Mysore road, Bangalore. What a wonderful experience it was?

Same weather conditions, same Bangalore, only difference is that,

Bannarghatta National park is run by the Government and the Wonder La is managed by a private corporate entity.

Here are some of the images of the animals taken during the ride. They are not of great quality but given the mood & conditions, I am happy that I could do at least to this extent.